The food industry has a relatively low technology penetration and companies vary widely in their ability to provide information to their partners in any given supply-chain. This inability to provide information is compounded by the complex nature of the supply-chains themselves. The supply chains consist of a complex maze of sequence and parallelisms that can be arbitrarily mixed and changed with time as shown in the FIG. 1.
Many companies (supply-stage legal entities) or a combination of supply-chain legal entities) require a complex structure that enables maintenance of the manufacturing processes across various departments, divisions or even different companies. Further, when companies are being asked to perform a trace of a product they fail to be able to provide answers to questions such as: what is in the container on the ship; how many pallets are inside the container; how many boxes are inside the pallets; how many cans are inside the box; what is inside the can; where did the content come from; how was it grown; what fertilizer was used; what pesticides were used; when was the seed sown; what type of seed was used; was the farm next to a power plant; did the farm have toilets; what manufacturing processes were used, etc.
Existing business enterprise software and logistics software vendors such as; SAP, Oracle, 12, People-Soft and Manugistics fail to be able to accommodate the fact that the food supply-chain will be in a constant state of flux. The supply-chain entities continually aim to optimize their resources, reduce their costs, and increase their efficiencies while still meeting all regulatory and commercial constraints. In practice, this means that the supply-chain entities constantly change their suppliers, their supply-chain processes and stages.
Because the supply-chain is an environment of constant flux, the existing systems cannot change during run-time without affecting the database structure and application code. This means that no application easily adaptable for defining a new process or changing on existing process at the same time. In other words, the present systems create new databases when the primary application structure is altered. In addition, the present systems fail to consider the time taken for a product to travel the supply chain (e.g., farm to table).
As shown in FIG. 2, traditional enterprise software vendor (ES) provide software such as Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP), Material Requirements Planning (MRP) or financial and accounting software. These types of software applications help companies manage resources within their own business environment (inside the box). These types of software are usually very expensive and thus not all participants within the supply chain can afford them. In the food industry very few of the manufactures/suppliers have ERP-type solutions outside the U.S.A. and EU markets. Traditional logistics software vendors provide software for warehouse management, purchasing and automated inventory replenishment solutions. These types of software applications are also expensive and very few companies within the food industry supply-chain can afford them. They are designed to link between companies that have installed traditional enterprise software. They do not solve the problems associated with food safety and traceability.
Because the supply-chain is an environment of constant flux, there exists a need to have a structure capable of being changed during run-time itself without affecting the database structure and application code. There is a need to be able to define a new process or change an existing process at the same time. In other words, the system does not create new databases when the primary application structure is altered. Also, there exists a need to take into account the time taken for a product to travel the supply chain from farm to table.